An increase of over 100% in program expenditures for the Pell Grant program over a five year period of time, from $14.7 billion in the 2007-08 award year to $33.4 billion in the 2011-12 award year, places an otherwise popular program under scrutiny. This article considers the factors and options informing federal policy related to the Pell Grant…

Background: In Ohio, levy campaigns are a burdensome task for district administrators and stakeholders alike. To date, there is little research on the districts' role in crafting school budget referenda campaigns. Purpose: This study asked three research questions: How did the macropolitical contexts shape stakeholders' decision making in terms of…

The focus of this paper is the coalition United Kingdom government policy on university funding in England as a political economy. It depicts higher education as a public and private good in the context of international trends in "cost sharing" and it addresses the centrality of economic drivers for the profile and orientation of higher…

This article is an update of a previous study by the author which examined the growth of elementary and public school revenues for school years 1982-1983 through 1991-1992 (Alexander 1997). Using the same framework, this study provides an analysis of the factors accounting for changes in real per-pupil revenues across the 50 states and the…

This case, inspired by a real school district scenario, was developed for use in a graduate-level course in school finance. James Spencer had just been selected as the new superintendent of a low-income, 400-student, rural school district in need of many capital improvements. The previous superintendent had refused to hold a bond election because…

This study focused on the federal and Illinois State the reform legislation titled the Performance Evaluation Reform Act and Senate Bill 7. The Performance Evaluation Reform Act or "PERA" was created from collaboration between stakeholders as Illinois competed in a federal competition titled "Race to the Top." The legislation…

This longitudinal study examines factors that explain differences in levels of state appropriations for higher education across states, sectors, and institutions between 1984 and 2004. The study sheds light on the complex relationship between institutional mission, state fiscal health, and state political context in explaining appropriations for…

We provide an expanded environmental scan to assess the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) faced by education communities. Grounded in the literature, we identified 48 indicators and grouped them into 6 broad categories: (1) budget levels, (2) funding patterns, (3) community needs, (4) external economic conditions, (5)…

What accounts for the rapid growth in the For-Profit (FP) higher education sector in the US? How will its growth influence educational opportunity and degree attainment rates in a country that first pioneered a mass higher education built largely on expanding public colleges and universities? The current US experience is a version of what I call…

Little empirical attention has been paid to state capital expenditures for higher education. While some anecdotal evidence exists that the process of appropriating capital dollars to higher education institutions is a particularly political process, no study has systematically examined the determinants of higher education state capital spending.…

Higher education in the United Kingdom is undergoing a period of significant change. This is being driven by a number of factors: political, cultural, economic, and technological. The trends are global in their scope, and far reaching in their impact. They affect every aspect of university provision, the environment in which universities operate,…

This article examines the education policy environment in Tennessee that preceded a comprehensive reform bill enacted to enhance the state's Race to the Top application. Through interviews with key policymakers in Tennessee, I describe how recent reform efforts undertaken at the state level positioned Tennessee as a strong contender for the Race…

The reform of education funding systems to achieve greater equity and adequacy is an ongoing struggle in many states. Because funding of public elementary and secondary education is constitutionally a state responsibility, the struggle plays out largely in state legislatures. At the same time, education finance reform does not take place in a…

This report provides a systematic review and empirical evidence related to the experiences of middle-income countries and economies participating in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), 2000 to 2015. PISA is a triennial survey that aims to evaluate education systems worldwide by testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old…

Since the 1960s, American Catholic social institutions have struggled with issues related to their organizational and religious identities (Dosen, 2009; Gallin, 2000; Weakland, 1994). For Catholic colleges and universities, these issues are evidenced by the difficulty some institutions have with being readily able to recognize their distinctive…